Category Archives: Culture

Art World

2nd
Mar. × ’10
By Sarah
Mexican artists come to Oaxaca to idle, pontificate and get lavishly drunk.  Admirers gather around them in obsequious eddies, asking hopeful questions to which the artists respond with one of two postures : an arm thrown around the asker’s shoulder in mock commiseration, or a flippant dismissal via shrug.  The artists opine in grand swoops [...]
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Advances In The Ongoing Battle With Machismo

18th
Feb. × ’10
By Sarah
It started as it usually does, with a man leaning out of a truck shouting, “HEY BABY!!” and laughing with the satisfaction of a baboon gnawing on a piece of rotten fruit. The machismo funk.  If I’d had a semi-automatic weapon, there would have been Kill Billish gratification of a type that would deter any slightly [...]
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One Brief Illustration of Authenticity

15th
Feb. × ’10
By Sarah
The other day we were walking by Santo Domingo on the cobblestone apron that fans out beside the church when our attention focused on two grubby street kids, climbing up a pile of sand left over from construction and then throwing themselves back down, gleefully.  They gave little puppy shrieks and pummeled the sand lovingly [...]
Also posted in Authenticity, Dogs | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

The Never-Ending Cycles of Cultural Adjustment

7th
Feb. × ’10
By Sarah
The stages of cultural adjustment have been written about a lot.  It’s nothing new to highlight the honeymoon stage, the hostility stage, the acceptance stage, and the (somewhat dubious and too often too early too triumphantly declared) home stage.  Here in Oaxaca that might be called the mole-n’-chapulines stage, the WTF traffic/construction/machismo/why-does-it-take-30-minutes-to-get-that-coffee-I-ordered? stage, the oh-Mexico [...]
Also posted in identity | Tagged , , , | 16 Comments